


[Timestamp] + [Glossary]

by aeriallon



Series: Flyboys [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drunk Sex, Multi, Oral Sex, The Author Regrets Nothing, Threesome - F/M/M, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 16:46:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18210944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeriallon/pseuds/aeriallon
Summary: “You said you hadn’t ever slept with a guy!”“I didn’t, I…slept with a couple. A married couple.”Sam gazed at him in frank reappraisal. “Well, if you aren’t just a big party bag full of surprises.”[A timestamp toFlyboysthat didn't fit in anywhere despite my most heroic efforts.]





	1. [Timestamp]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starlessfuture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlessfuture/gifts).



“So I, I may have, before. But just once.”

“You said you hadn’t ever slept with a guy!”

“I didn’t, I…slept with a couple. A married couple.”

Sam gazed at him in frank reappraisal. “Well, if you aren’t just a big party bag full of surprises.”

John tried to shrug, diffident, but thinking about Teyla still made it hard to breathe. “It was just a one-time thing, we were all really drunk. I mean they’re—they’re married, and she and I were always, it was kind of—you know, something. Complicated, I guess.”

Sam eyed him, saying nothing, but his face was saying everything for him. John tried again, hoping he could at least convince himself this time. “It’s not like—I mean he and I didn’t even really, we were both, it was mostly about her.” Shit, that hadn’t even been a sentence.

Sam surveyed him with pity. “Sheppard, you either had the worst three-way in the history of drunken three-ways, or you’re just lying, and at this point I don’t actually know which is sadder.”

John looked at the floor, mute. _I loved her_ , he wanted to say; _we loved her together, that was all._

•

It had happened about five weeks after the memorial service, and was, in a way, the reason he’d left. Teyla had been nearly to the end of her first trimester, just enough for her belly to have the slightest curve and for her always-lustrous skin to glow, impossibly, even more. They’d finished with dinner and put the kids to bed. No one had said anything about McKay; they didn’t have to.

The three of them had been working in the garden all day, John excruciatingly slowly, knee still in a brace, recovering from the first surgery. He couldn’t kneel or bend, so he worked either standing up or sitting down to do whatever small job Teyla asked of him, like cutting up tubers for planting. She was taking one of her increasingly rare holidays from being ambassador, with its current crazy-making task: trying to select representative diplomats from each Pegasus planet who could actually get along and not offend each other mortally with some heinously strange custom or idiosyncratic belief system. Sheppard couldn’t think of a single person in either galaxy better suited for the job. The weirdest thing of all was that she actually seemed to enjoy it.

Normally in the evenings Teyla would sing while John played guitar, and sometimes they told stories to the kids while Kanaan did something that looked kind of like knitting except using only one stick and a series of metal rings; John had never even tried to figure it out. But tonight Kanaan had killed one of those duck-looking birds for dinner, to celebrate, and there had been plenty of ruus wine, and then after that whatever the white brandy was, the kind with the faint milky-bluish tint that tasted like jasmine. Teyla wasn’t drinking, but John wound up having quite a lot of it, and so had Kanaan; and now John wasn’t quite sure how it had happened but Kanaan was lying in bed beneath his wife, and John thought he might have been watching them kissing for a while, but he wasn’t completely sure of anything anymore, and everything was spinning, which must have been the white brandy.

He’d had so much of it he couldn’t even undress himself, much less stay hard. But that didn’t really seem important, not as important as touching Teyla. He stopped struggling with the buttons, shirt halfway open, and just crawled up onto the bed with them, straddling Kanaan’s lower legs and unable to take his eyes off her in the lamplight, her mouth flushed and open. She smiled at him blurrily; he was drunk as hell. And somehow, through the haze of ethanol, John thought he got their marriage, for the first time: Kanaan wasn’t her match by any means, but her compliment, solid and kind yet quick-witted and somehow, in his dry easy sincerity, just right for Teyla. John hadn’t understood them for a long time; but seeing them together like this, outside Atlantis, now he did.

He already couldn’t remember how this had started. It wasn’t happening, only it was.

Kanaan hadn’t really undressed either; none of them had. He’d only opened his trousers enough to pull himself out, and Teyla just dragged the panels of her skirt to one side and settled herself on her husband’s hips, but backward, facing John, gasping a little as she slid down, somehow already wet, or wet enough—had Kanaan been fingering her too? John couldn’t think. He couldn’t think, because Teyla had undone the laces of her vest and it was hanging open, and her breasts were exactly like he’d always thought they would be, generous and golden-skinned and low-slung. She reached out her hands to John while Kanaan took hold of her waist, panting and clearly trying not to thrust. John swallowed, gulping down a wave of heat, and took both her hands in his, hoping his face didn’t have a stupid look on it. He was either never drinking white brandy again, or maybe it would become his favorite drink, depending on how things went. What the fuck were they doing?

“John,” she began, voice sweet and reasonable, as if she were making an away-team speech to a new group of potential trade partners. “For many years now, I have felt that you and I—”

He didn’t mean to, he wasn’t trying to silence her or really even trying to do anything; she just lifted those eyes to him, clear and amber, and her breasts were lush and swaying a little as she moved slowly, Kanaan inside her, and her fingers were strong and thin and hot in his, and before he knew what he was doing John had lurched forward, taken her face in both hands and kissed her the way he’d never stopped wanting to since that day in the training room, desperate and claiming. Teyla made a surprised sound that he swallowed with his mouth, then another, softer, and then John’s hands were in her hair and her nails were digging into the skin of his back and their mouths clung together, hard, and it was like lying in the chair for the first time, everything lighting up and spiraling above his head in perfect astronomical precision.

They were kisses like sobbing, like being stabbed, every single one was everything he’d always wanted and he needed them like oxygen above ten thousand feet. He took them for himself, bit each one out of her and put it somewhere inside to keep, since he couldn’t have.

He tore himself away from her mouth with difficulty so he could tongue his way down her rounded body; he already knew every muscle, every firm curve of her, from fighting with her for years. Kanaan moved under her now, shallowly, carefully, but unable to stop, and John thumbed over her nipples, licked into her navel, and said, voice ragged, “Teyla, please—will you, just let me, I want to—” and somehow the three of them moved all at once, Kanaan drew her backward a little and Teyla let herself be pulled so that John was finally, _finally_ right where he wanted to be, there between her wide thighs, held up on his elbows, stretching his bad leg out behind him so that it wasn’t in the way.

He didn’t tease her or fuck around, there wasn’t time for that; he pushed his hands underneath her, cradling her full ass and drawing her up closer to his mouth like a cup, feeling Kanaan’s pelvic bones shifting, grinding against the backs of his hands, but he didn’t even notice that it hurt, just leaned in with his full weight and covered as much of her as he could with his entire mouth, tongue slipping down between her lips, soaking his chin, the cock moving in and out of her just another part of Teyla. It still wasn’t enough, he needed inside, he sucked his two longest fingers into his mouth and then waited for an out-stroke before sliding in just above Kanaan, who cried out, inarticulate.

John lowered his mouth back onto her and felt like he was being born. He could just touch the rough patch inside her with his fingertip, the place that was her center, and somehow all of Teyla, all of the miracle that was her whole self—poised and regal, subtle, fiercely loyal, a graceful lethal flurry, true-souled—all of her, the size of the entire galaxy to him, contracted down to this point. He shuddered, two of his fingers as far inside her as he could get them, the rest of his hand curling, cramped up, her pubic bone crushing the joints where fingers met palm and there wasn’t any room for him to move, but his mouth was on her and his hand was half inside her and she was pushing herself up against him as hard as she could and he didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care.

As she got closer, closer to him, closer to herself, clenching around them both, voice rising in pitch until it tightened every muscle in his body, John’s entire world narrowed down to twin orbiting points, like a bright binary star: the ribbed place inside her that he could just barely reach with the pad of his longest finger, stroking; and the hot plump ruby of her between his lips, hard and swollen out past its rose-petal hood, that he’d been tracing tiny patterns against with his tongue, writing something meaningless over and over. These two parts of Teyla were suddenly all of her, and somehow he was allowed to hold them both, just for that instant, and he thought about her body as being like his; thought about how he liked to come, what felt best, what felt most like dying and least like thinking, and something shook apart in him as he drew his mouth taut around her and sucked her in, wanting to pull her into himself, reaching up to cup her amber breast with his other hand and finding Kanaan’s already there, Kanaan’s hand strong and big under his, and they touched her together. And when her cries got even higher he let her wildness move into him, he stopped being gentle, stopped stroking and started pressing, fingers curling up fiercely where Kanaan’s cock couldn’t reach, sliding in as much of his hand as would fit, hooking three fingers around the inside of her pubic bone and fucking into her, driving the heel of his hand against as much of her cunt as he could reach, shoving against her again and again. Teyla grabbed his head with both hands and started to ride his mouth and John went gladly, just let her: let her use him the way he’d used her strength and her brilliance all these years, made his lips soft over his teeth and let her take him.

When she arched her entire body, cunt pulsing up against his face, her wetness everywhere, and went completely rigid and silent, he pressed in even closer and stroked out with the flat of his tongue inside his mouth: once, twice, again, and felt her shatter; she sobbed, fingers twisting into his hair, and he could feel Kanaan stiffen underneath her, chanting her name, and he pulled his hand away from Kanaan’s, left it there twisting her nipple, and got it under himself just in time to press down against something, while Teyla shook through the aftershocks. And she immediately started rising again, it started building and swelling and he could do this for her, honestly he could do this for her forever. So he didn’t stop, thrust again into that curled-up, hidden place, clinging to her single-mindedly as she writhed and kept fucking his face, and John wasn’t sure how he could live without this now, he loved her so much he felt blind with it, but for once he could do it for her, just this once; so he offered himself up, completely, to her need, and let himself be overtaken.

He lost track after that, a little; at some point Kanaan slipped out, and slumped to one side and held Teyla’s hand, and drifted into sleep, smiling blurrily at both of them, and after that John settled his shoulders against her thighs and decided to stay where he was as long as she’d let him. Teyla tried to touch him once and he twisted away from her fingers, let them settle again in his hair. The night coalesced and shifted around them; he felt like he ate her out for hours, incredulous and contented and gradually less and less drunk, until every time she came it was softer and quieter, like ripples in a pool, except for once when she burst into helpless peals of delighted laughter, just simple, purely joyful. After that one they kissed for a long time; until she brushed away his tears and he started stirring again, working to bring her back, coaxing her to come to him. He knew every inch of her, now; inside she was ridged in one place, and smooth and hot and tense in another, and in the deepest part he could reach she was soft like sodden velvet, clinging to his drenched fingers so tightly as to crush them, and he moved inside her in that plush deep place until he felt her clench and quiver around him and then he lowered his mouth again, and this time when she came they knew it would be the last, if it had gone on any longer he would have needed to fuck her and that wasn’t what was happening. Teyla rose up under his tongue and his fingers and it was like his first time in the gateroom, everything humming and coming to life around him, because of him, underneath his touch, and she opened her mouth soundlessly, back arching off the bed, and he reached up with his other hand, knowing somehow she was trying not to scream, and she sucked his fingers into her mouth, so that he was inside her everywhere, blood-hot and perfect, and when she came her whole self broke open.

John crawled up and took her in his arms, and held her while she shuddered and came down, touching his cheek and smiling, saying things in Athosian he for some reason couldn’t understand, but didn’t need to. 

She fell asleep not long after, lying on her side, hair fanned out over her face. The skin of his fingers had pruned inside her; he sucked them dry, one by one, not taking his eyes off her, willing himself never to forget the taste. After that he just lay there on one elbow, watching until the sky paled and Kanaan shifted over, reaching out for her warmth, and without waking Teyla curled into his side.

Eventually John stood up stiffly, wincing when his head throbbed and his boxer shorts pulled, and looked around on the floor for the blankets. He found one that looked thin and soft, and put it over them, trying not to make too much noise or make the air puff up when he shook it out over the bed. Teyla stirred and stuck a foot out from under the covers, but still didn’t wake. He watched the two of them for a moment, peaceful and safe. Listened for Torren or the twins, but heard nothing. Picked up his tac vest and sidearm on the way out; he’d somehow left his thigh holster on the entire time.

He was almost all the way back to Atlantis before he realized his wristband was missing. He looked at the strip of exposed skin for a long time, pale in the faint light of the jumper’s console, ridged on the inside with old scars, layered on top of each other. Teyla must have somehow pulled it off him, or maybe he’d yanked it off himself, before touching her; but she would find it, and know it was his, and keep it. It was fine. He had what he needed. He could keep going.

He didn’t look at the other seat, where she wasn’t; or behind him, where he could hear Rodney’s absence resonant through the silent cabin. He watched Atlantis approaching below, its familiar curve against the wet blue, and then looked back up at the field of stars pricked out of black velvet.

“Okay, then,” he said to no one; and turned the jumper away, and headed toward the _Daedalus._

 

 


	2. [Glossary]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pilots employ colorful diction. Below is a glossary to every term used in the fic, you dirtbag airman.

_AFI_ —technically Air Force Instruction (separate, documented sets of regulations), but privately used to mean Another Fucking Inconvenience

_airman—_ any serviceperson in the USAF, though it can refer particularly to pilots

_Aluminum U_ —nickname for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (also known as the Blue Zoo and the Colorado Home for Wayward Boys)

_Army proof_ —idiot proof; not even IOA could fuck it up

_Article 15_ —an extrajudicial punishment, far more mild than a court martial, meted out by one’s CO

_back to the taxpayers_ —where you send a dead aircraft

_bandit_ —a known bad guy spotted in the air (cf. _visual_ )

_BDUs_ —Battle Dress Uniform, still slang for fatigues even though the USAF has replaced them with the ABU (Airman Battle Uniform)

_bent_ —damaged, broken; see also _tits-up, down_

_bingo, bingo fuel—_ when your fuel tank indicator starts blinking but you like to live on the edge, and so keep driving without stopping at a gas station; i.e., minimum amount of fuel needed to get back to base

_black projects_ —extremely sekrit weapons/aircraft/things that the military is developing, in sekrit

_blue on blue_ —air engagement between two USAF planes/friendly fire resulting from same

_booming_ —when you’re flying very, very fast (can also refer to wild partying)

_bag/box nasty—_ lunch that dining facilities gives you when you’re flying or for another reason can’t eat on base

_broke-dick_ —having an injury or medical condition that prevents you from serving (can also refer to equipment that’s down, or someone who’s deliberately malingering)

_broken arrow_ —military suicide strategy in which you call down friendly fire on your own position

_buddy spike—_ code notifying an aircraft that has locked onto you that you’re a friendly, don’t shoot

_canary_ —unflattering term for a full-bird colonel (who, it is assumed, no longer flies actual airplanes)

_Chair Force_ —Army idiots thinking they’re being funny about USAF members’ supposed laziness

_Charlie Foxtrot_ —call letters for _clusterfuck_

_colorful actions_ —obnoxious showing off while flying; see also _flathatting, hotdogging_

_con leave_ —convalescent leave (only up to 30 days in usual circumstances)

_DADT_ —repealed in 2010, thus allowing American LGB military to serve openly for the first time

_to depart_ —to lose control of one’s aircraft; also _departure_ or _DNF_ (departure from normal flight)

_dining facilities_ —what the USAF has instead of mess halls, because they’re fancy (and yet another way that Atlantis is weird, in addition to having Sheppard being CO to a bunch of jarheads)

_dirtbag airman_ —that one asshole in aviators and without a regulation haircut who shows up to meetings twenty minutes late with Starbucks (but doesn’t bring you any)

_dirt nap_ —the big sleep, aka dying (can also refer to passing out)

_displacement rolls_ —a particularly lunatic form of barrel roll along two axes at once (roll and yaw)

_down_ —broken, not-flying (whether said of an aircraft or a pilot)

_downrange_ —far away from base/in a hostile or combat situation, i.e. somewhere you don’t want to be

_driver_ —a pilot

_to eat dirt_ —pretty much what it sounds like, e.g., Sam after Scott gets through with him in _Ant-Man_

_E-6_ —technical sergeant

_exfil_ —exfiltration, also extraction; to get someone the hell out of hostile territory

_firewalled_ —to have your throttle pushed as far to its limit as it will possibly go

_to flathat, flathatting_ —stunt flying, usually too low to the ground and colossally stupid, see also _colorful actions_

_flight line_ —where airplanes are parked and serviced (both on the airfield and in hangars)

_flight risk_ —sarcastic; a person of excessive rank (O-6 or higher) if they’re allowed behind the stick

_football bat_ —someone who is out-of-place, unusual, or fucked-up (not to say, queer)

_GIB—_ Guy in Back (of a two-person fighter), usually responsible for weapons; also _RIO, R2D2_

_to goon up—_ you have made a great big mistake

_grape_ —a pilot or aircraft that’s not hard to shoot down; easy pickings

_grounded_ —what you are when you can’t fly, i.e. more or less not an entire whole person

_helo_ —the real name for what jarheads and dogfaces insist on calling “choppers”

_to hit the silk—_ to abandon your aircraft and hope to god your parachute opens

_to hotdog, hotdogging—_ to take ridiculous risks while flying a billion-dollar fighter jet

_to jink_ —to maneuver around wildly and chaotically in a desperate attempt to avoid a threat

_jock_ —a pilot

_maroon beret—_ headgear traditionally worn by pararescuemen

_milkruns_ —super boring patrol missions over neutral, non-hostile airspace; implies multiple stops

_MREs_ —Meals Ready to Eat, additionally known as Meals Refusing to Exit; see also _bag nasty_

_mustang—_ an officer who entered via the enlisted ranks; can be respectful or pejorative, depending

_my fun meter is pegged_ —extremely sarcastic way of saying that this is the most "fun" it is possible to have (because the arm on the dial is pegged, i.e. can’t move over any further/go any higher)

_NCO_ —non-commissioned officer; an enlisted person who has been promoted up through the ranks to a certain level but doesn’t actually have a commission and therefore isn’t technically an officer

_NFOD_ —No Fear of Death

_O-6_ —a colonel (“full bird” because of the accompanying eagle insignia)

_OCS_ —Officer Candidate School, which one usually enters having finished an undergraduate degree

_ODS—_ Operation Desert Storm/Shield, aka Gulf I (1990-1991, mostly Kuwait and Iraq)

_OEF_ —Operation Enduring Freedom, aka Gulf II (2001-2003, mostly Iraq)

_OIR_ —Operation Inherent Resolve, aka Gulf III (2014-present, mostly Iraq and Syria)

_opportunity to excel_ —extremely sarcastic; a disastrous situation you have no power/resources to fix

_parafoils_ —high-tech parachutes that behave more like ultralight airplanes and can be flown for some distances (rather than just dumping you on the ground); pararescuemen train on these at Ft. Bragg

_PFM—_ pure fucking magic; refers to complex inner workings (as of, for example, fighter jets) that can’t be understood by most people, even if carefully explained; sometimes _FM_ , fucking magic

_PJ_ —parajumper, slang for a pararescueman (male gender unfortunately still appropriate)

_pop tart_ —pilot who’s only had a few weeks of training but already thinks they know everything

_punching out—_ hitting the eject button, bending over, and kissing your ass goodbye; heavily discouraged as it tends to cost taxpayers upward of a few hundred million dollars per fighter

_qualifying_ —what you have to keep doing in a certain kind of aircraft in order to be allowed to fly one of that type: namely, log a certain number of flight hours per month

_queep_ —annoying, tedious ground duties (usually paperwork) which prevent pilots from flying

_roll, pitch, and yaw_ —the three axes of aerial movement, on an x/y/z grid: roll is top-bottom (longitudinal), pitch is forward-backward (lateral), and yaw is left-right (vertical); easy to picture if you make your arm be an airplane and think about usual meanings for _roll_ and _pitch_ (as in, forward)

_RPG—_ rocket propelled grenade; actually intended and primarily used for blowing up vehicles/tanks, but more recently (and fairly effectively) also used as anti-aircraft weaponry, mainly against helos

_secondment_ —temporary transfer to another assignment/base

_SERE_ —Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, a specialized series of training programs for aircrew and other front-line troops who have a higher risk of capture/being taken hostage, and/or whose clearance makes them especially vulnerable to being detained/tortured

_six_ [as in, _got your/on your]_ —gentle reader, I give you a dialogue between me and my mother.

> _my mom_ : In the war movies, why do they always say “on your six”?
> 
> _me_ : Because you give directions as if you’re standing on a clock face facing noon, so someone who has your six is behind you.
> 
> _my mom_ : [ _doubtfully_ ] Hm, maybe that’s where it comes from…
> 
> _me_ : No, that _is_ where it comes from.
> 
> _my mom_ : It does sound _kind_ of plausible.
> 
> _me_ : [ _increasingly irked_ ] Mom, I’m not making it up, I’m _telling_ you. It’s called clock position.
> 
> _my mom_ : [ _very long pause_ ] …well, I guess that _could_ be it. [/scene]

_smoking hole_ —all that’s left after you crash your very expensive airplane

_speed of heat_ —when you’re flying very, very fast

_state_ —request by the controller to know how much fuel you have left before you “splash” (run out)

_taco_ —nothing, a zero, a washout (because a taco is u-shaped, meaning _unsatisfactory_

_tac vest_ —tactical vest worn by Marines but not Air Force (yet another way Atlantis is anomalous)

_Tango Uniform_ —see also _tits-up_

_TDY_ —temporary duty; being assigned outside one’s usual posting, typically between 45 days and 6 months (any longer than that is considered a PCS, permanent change of station)

_“These Things We Do, That Others May Live”_ —the USAF pararescue slogan (sometimes given just as “That Others May Live”)

_throttle back_ —laying off the throttle; slowing down, dialing it back

_throttle jockey—_ pilot who likes things that go much faster than 250 mph (by about a factor of 10)

_tits-up_ —an ex-airplane, one pining for the fjords; a piece of equipment that is broken/messed-up/ completely cashed out (sometimes referred to by its call letters as _Tango Uniform)_

_trap_ —aircraft carrier landing in which the jet is snagged and stopped by the arresting cable

_up & locked_—not paying attention, as when your landing gear is stowed and yet you still…try to land

_Viper_ —affectionate nickname for the Lockheed Martin F-16 Falcon (no relation to Sam); based on the fighters in _Battlestar Galactica_ (2004-2009), because pilots are giant nerds

_visual_ —a friendly aircraft spotted while flying (cf. _bandit)_

_War in Afghanistan_ —dozens of operations ongoing; longest war in US history (2001-present)

_warp one_ —flying very, very fast

_waveoff_ —when the controller tells a pilot not to touch down, to abort the landing (usually on an aircraft carrier); you can come around and try again, if you’re not up and locked

_what the piss, airman/what the fricking piss_ —phrase angrily shouted at new pilot trainees

_white rocket_ —nickname for the Northrup Talon T-38, because…it’s white and goes very fast

_wingnut_ —member of the USAF

_wingovers_ —ridiculous (and really beautiful) acrobatic maneuver in dogfighting and paragliding, in which the pilot makes a 180º change of direction along two axes at once (both yaw and pitch)

_zipper-suited sun god_ —how fighter pilots start to think of themselves, all grandiose in their flight suits and annoying the shit out of everyone else

_zoomies, zoombags_ —can refer specifically to Academy graduates/cadets but also more generally to anyone in the USAF; see also _airman, wingnut_

**Author's Note:**

> For starlessfuture, because her dedicated and beautiful keysmashing gave me heart when I was weary.


End file.
